Hospitals are a narrative gold-mine. These are places where lives end and begin, love is declared and hearts are fixed and broken. They make for great metaphors, too – Lindsay Anderson’s ‘Britannia Hospital’ anatomised a whole surgeon’s gallery of English maladies through the lurching tones of comedy, satire and outright body horror. With the NHS
A short story collection can be like a good whiskey, it goes down easy, but once it hits your stomach there’s a burning that leaves a lasting impression. Two Dogs at One Dog Inn by David John Griffin, is like someone handing you 11 shots and one tumbler of whiskey. Some of the stories are
In terms of adaptation, the fairy tale has a strong claim to champion, considering the sheer number of reinventions, modernisations and bastardisations of the original source material. Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Perrault, Shahrazad, Apollodorus – parents of so many grandchildren that they wouldn’t recognise half of them. In an arena of countless papier-mache reworkings, it is
